


Night Will Bring No Dawn

by Inksinger, Nighthaunting



Series: The Museum [1]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Crack Pairing, Gen, Graphic Description, Implied Cannibalism, M/M, Original Characters - Freeform, Scourge, blood elf, character divergence, dubcon, implied forced cannibalism, psychological abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:56:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inksinger/pseuds/Inksinger, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nighthaunting/pseuds/Nighthaunting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>✴THIS VERSION IS OUTDATED AND THEREFORE DISCONTINUED DUE TO REWRITE✴</p><p>AU - While leading a hopeless last stand against the Scourge in defense of the Sunwell, Lor'themar catches the attention of the traitor prince Arthas and is taken prisoner. It quickly becomes apparent that Arthas is not interested in turning the elf into another mindless, undead minion--but the alternative is hardly better.</p><p>Story begins following the events documented in 'The Fall of Silvermoon' (fifth campaign, Path of the Damned, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos) and should continue on a bit past the endgame of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Rated for events in later chapters and colorful descriptions throughout. Major character death(s) planned for later chapters. Not for the squeamish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Where Once was Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nighthaunting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nighthaunting/gifts).



Lor’themar had not gone into that last desperate battle with much hope.

He was no fool; he had known the ragged forces he had managed to rally in the Sunwell’s final defence would have next to no chance of succeeding in keeping their sacred well out of Arthas’s wretched hands. They had lost too much already, and their numbers were thin, the warriors who still stood with him too weak to really hope to survive for long against the untiring forces of the Scourge.

He could see the same grim understanding in the eyes of his fellow elves as they had waited for the Scourge to appear. They had all expected to die, and to be raised as more mindless warriors. They were all willing to sacrifice even the Light itself in this last, futile stand of defiance against the bastard human prince.

Lor’themar had not believed things could possibly get any worse, for him or for his people. Perhaps that was what had leant strength and fury to him as he hacked away at every undead filth foolish enough to cross into his line of vision: The utter hopelessness of their battle, and the near-certain slavery that awaited those brave enough to follow him to this bloodbath.

Yet as they battled on, there came a moment—a very, very brief moment—when the tide almost seemed to turn in their favor. It was suddenly becoming possible to spot more living soldiers than unliving, and those who still stood began to press their seeming opening with a collective cry of victory.

For a moment, there was hope… and then he appeared, and that hope withered and died like the grass touched by the frost surrounding him.

He came riding astride a skeleton horse in tattered finery; his bone-littered armor glinted dimly, almost seeming to devour the light that shone against it as he rode as calmly into the still-waging battle as though the bloody field was nothing more than an empty alleyway.

Behind him came a swarm of reinforcements; it was bitterly clear to Lor’themar that he had kept the larger portion of his fetid horde back for exactly this purpose: to raise and then crush the last of the elven forces’ hope, crippling them with one sadistic blow before swooping in for the kill.

His plan appeared to work for a moment; at his appearance, more than a few fair voices rose in dismay, and three warriors near Lor’themar fell, cut down by their foes in the precious few seconds they froze to stare at the second wave of undead. Where they had been pushing the monsters away from their Sunwell, the elves who still stood now crept steadily back, seeming to cower towards that which they protected as though its energy alone could save them.

From where he still fought two skeletons dripping with a few last ribbons of rotted flesh, Lor’themar saw Arthas raise the index and middle fingers of one gloved hand in a gesture he knew all too well. There was a breath of stillness from the newly-arrived Scourge forces, a stillness that chilled Lor’themar like ice—and then those two fingers jerked down, pointing coldly at the elven forces ahead.

The second wave of the Scourge forces fell upon them like a hurricane.

Lor’themar let out a defiant battlecry, then broke free from a half-rotted zombie and charged to meet the swarm head-on. Behind him he could hear his own forces echo his cry, and knew they must be fighting to follow him as his blades tore into the first festering abomination.

The elven forces fought valiantly, as ferocious even now as a hawkstrider defending its nest. Lor’themar tore down skeleton after zombie after patchwork horror; across the field, he glimpsed Halduron ripping his way through a similar string of foes, working to get closer to Lor’themar. Fireballs flew past the elven forces, torching the undead invaders like grisly bundles of dry wood. Blades flashed like silver flames in the misty morning light, slicing through disintegrating flesh and brittle bones as easily as if they were warm butter.

Yet for all their vigor, it was only too clear the elves would soon be forced to retreat or die. The Scourge did not dwindle now; in fact, wherever one reanimated corpse fell, three more fell on the living warrior responsible—and not all those corpses that went down remained still. Even those zombies cut in half at the waists or stomachs were able to grab onto the ankles of the living soldiers, immobilizing or tripping them up long enough for a more mobile opponent to strike them down.

Lor’themar’s despair turned once again to rage, but even he was growing weary; his movements were becoming slower and clumsier, and now more and more saronite blades and rotted claws found purchase against his skin as his foes finally began to beat him back with the rest.

By chance he looked up from another fallen skeleton (he hadn’t counted the things he felled to begin with, and doubted he would have been able to keep count this long if he had) and found Arthas watching from behind his forces, sitting proud and straight as though his was the right cause to fight for.

As though he felt the ranger’s eyes on him, Arthas suddenly turned his dispassionate gaze on Lor’themar, and raised his chin as if to ask why on earth the high elf was watching him instead of killing—

—That zombie! A flash of his knives and the thing lay in pieces at Lor’themar’s feet, and then the white-blond man was too busy fending off another abomination to worry about the chilly gaze that still seemed to bore into him from where Arthas sat observing the chaos.

Something bony, cold, and distinctly slimy latched onto one of Lor’themar’s ankles, tripping him up as he moved to slash at yet another undead thing. With a curse, he bent low and sliced the hand off the zombie who’d grabbed him, then straightened and delivered a kick to its head that sent it rolling off the thing’s shoulders and off towards Arthas and his rotted steed.

Once again, Lor’themar’s eyes strayed to the bastard prince, and narrowed as he noted how much closer the man had ridden. If he sought combat with Lor’themar, he was welcome to come and do his worst—

The look on Arthas’s face shifted to a wickedly amused smirk; before Lor’themar had time to be confused, something hard came down across the back of his head, knocking him to the ground as darkness rushed to swallow him up.

He never heard Halduron’s call for their forces to retreat.

——

When Lor’themar came to sometime later, the battle was over and the Sunwell destroyed—not that Lor’themar himself bore witness to this for himself. By then he had already been bound with heavy saronite chains and tossed carelessly into a supply wagon that, while it stank of old blood and filth, thankfully only bore mismatched bits of armor, a scattered few bone shards, and stacks of fur and leather.

In fact, the high elf had come to mere moments after the Scourge forces finally left ruined Quel’Thalas behind and began their march on Dalaran. As he slowly regained his senses, Lor’themar’s ears—though still ringing painfully—began to pick up the sounds of the decrepit wagon’s wheels clattering along the ground, of the breathless army surrounding him clattering and clinking in their rotted bones and broken armor, of an occasional moan or hiss from one of the more ‘fortunate’ wretches who still retained their vocal chords.

Slowly, wary of being noticed in his four-walled, ceilingless transport, Lor’themar dragged himself clumsily up to lean against a pile of dirty furs. His body ached from the battle and from the deep bruises left by laying for how knew how many hours on the chains wrapped tight about him. His hair was a mess of knots and dirt and blood and Light only knew what else; his skin color could barely be discerned, so stained by his own blood were the patches of skin laid bare by the slashes and breaks in his armor.

His armor itself was shattered and blood-sprayed; his weapons—even the knives hidden in his boots and the insides of his sleeves!—had been taken from him, and it felt as though the monsters had even stripped him of his gloves, which left him without even their steel-reinforced knuckles to defend himself with… not that his hands were bound in front of him to begin with.

Stifling a groan, Lor’themar leaned back against the furs and looked up at the smoke-laden sky and the diseased-seeming trees that passed on either side. Through the pounding ache in his skull, he wondered vaguely where they were now. These didn’t look like any trees that flourished in the Eversong Forest…

Another pang thundered through his head, and Lor’themar squeezed his eye shut as he fought back a livid curse. Had he been struck across the head? Was that how they had gotten hold of him? His memories of the battle at the Sunwell were fuzzy, filled with chaos and blood and undead horrors that had glared with unseeing eye sockets and fetid lumps that had once been eyeballs…

He vaguely remembered seeing Arthas appear with another wave of undead, and charging at the new opponents in a brazen display of fearless defiance… He remembered Halduron cutting down undead after undead, fighting to get to him…

He growled as the rest of the fight seemed to blur and fade to darkness in his mind’s eye. What the hell had happened after the second wave had arrived?!

The wagon hit something in the road, and all its cargo—Lor’themar included—jumped and tumbled about, unheeded by the wandering army or the reeking undead beast that drew the wagon. Lor’themar grunted as he toppled over and landed hard on the chains, aggravating his existing link marks and undoubtedly creating new ones as the wind momentarily left his lungs.

There was a gravelly, barely-coherent bark from one of the soldiers, and the wagon was jostled again as a sun-bleached skeleton in tattered cloth armor leapt onto one side of it and peered in at Lor’themar with eyes that glowed an ugly pinkish-red. The elf glared back, feeling about as dangerous as an injured dragonhawk hatchling as he lay winded and sore on the floor of the wagon.

The skeleton tilted its head at Lor’themar, then hopped down and wheezed something Lor’themar didn’t quite catch—Light above, did the beasts have their own language, as well?

Whatever was said did nothing to slow or halt the procession, and after another moment Lor’themar dragged himself back against the pile of furs, leaning this time into the corner between the stack and the wall of the wagon and bracing himself with his legs (though his ankles were also chained together tightly—evidently they were taking no chances that he might escape).

Lor’themar’s mind was slowly becoming clearer, and this allowed him to begin to think through the thundrous pain still tormenting him and the biting chill of the chains. First and foremost in his mind was the fact that somehow, he was still alive. The Scourge could not possibly have any use for him while he was still breathing—he had no information they could possibly use now, since they had likely already taken the Sunwell (why else would they now be marching beyond the lands of Quel’Thalas?) Nor did they need to keep him alive if he was to be enslaved—they could just kill him like all of their other victims, and then they’d not only have a new slave, but a far more obedient one than the living elf chained up in their stench-ridden wagon. Surely Arthas, at least, understood that much?

Arthas.

Lor’themar bit back a growl as another bump in the road (were they even on a road?!) jostled the wagon and caused his head to knock against the wall of the wagon, scattering his thoughts for a moment as the pain spiked viciously.

Could Arthas have been the one to order his capture? It was the only possibility that made sense at the moment; surely, if he didn’t want any living captives, Lor’themar would either be rotting near the ruins of the Sunwell or wandering among the other risen dead as a new soldier of the Scourge. But why on earth would he want to keep Lor’themar alive? And, perhaps more importantly, were there others who, like Lor’themar, now sat alive and chained in another supply wagon, wondering over their own predicaments?

If that was the case, it would make sense to keep Lor’themar separate from any others. In Arthas’s position, Lor’themar would want to keep any ringleaders away from the other captives to prevent any escape attempts. But the question still remained as to why any elves had been captured alive rather than turned immediately into more rambling undead. Did Arthas seek to use them as examples of some sort—to torture and kill them in plain view of whoever their next victims were to be?

The idea turned Lor’themar’s blood cold, and with a grunt he began struggling as quietly as he could against his restraints; his lips curled back in a soundless snarl, laying his teeth bare as the saronite chains bit unforgivingly into his skin. Damn it, were the bloody things spiked, as well?

Slowly, painfully, he felt his right arm begin to slip under the chains, and after a struggle of what felt like fifteen or twenty minutes his arm had moved enough that the links farthest to his left now dug into his wrist. Winded from the pain and the effort he’d exerted, Lor’themar stopped and leaned back again, his chest heaving slightly as he glared up at the sky.

This was taking longer than he had anticipated—at this rate, surely something would check on him again and catch him either struggling to get free or working at the chains around his ankles. He didn’t hold much hope for his chances of survival if that happened; even once he caught his breath and started working at the chains again, his strength was greatly diminished even from where it had been during the battle (although, if truth be told, that had been strength fueled by animal instinct more than anything else.)

If something caught him working to free himself, Lor’themar doubted his ability to fight it off, much less disarm it… and even if he could get away from the first one, there was an entire army of the enemy around him and Arthas was doubtlessly close enough to order the elf killed and reanimated on the spot.

The links against his wrist slid up another few centimeters, biting into the fleshy heel of Lor’themar’s right hand. With a grimace, he decided this was a risk he would have to take—if he could keep up this pace and will himself not to clench his fist against the chains (which were definitely spiked, judging by the blood pooling in his hand), he would have his arms free in another ten minutes or less. He was too far along to stop now.

There was an odd, scratching sort of sound near the wagon, somewhat like a low-blowing wind disturbing a patch of sand in short, hungry gusts. The wagon jolted again, and Lor’themar shoved himself as far into his corner as he could, desperate to hide what he was up to as a rotted zombie poked its ugly head over the wall he leaned against and stared at him with the eye thatwasn’t hanging from a shattered socket by its ocular nerve.

What was left of the wretched creature’s nose twitched in time with the scratching sound, and with a inward curse Lor’themar realized it had smelled the blood he’d spilled trying to free himself… and the gruesome unliving thing above him was beginning to look decidedly hungry.

Images flashed unwarranted through his mind: memories of catching a few scattered undead scavenging the bodies of fallen magi, rangers, and warriors, of cutting down a more well-preserved menace when it had mistaken him for dead meat and had tried to eat his left arm. The Scourge ate meat—any meat they could find—much the same way vampires fed on the blood and life-force of their victims. There was no hunger behind that cannibalism, only an emptiness they tried to fill by devouring anything that bled and held still.

And Lor’themar was bleeding again.

Lor’themar’s mind raced as the zombie continued sniffing and staring at him. All he could think to do was hold very, very still, and pray to whatever deity would listen that the thing would get bored if it couldn’t see the blood and go away… or that something more in command of itself would think it was misbehaving and yank it away from the wagon.

The thing stared plaintively at him for another long moment; then, with a final, mournful-sounding huff, it jumped down from the side of the wagon and (ostensibly) resumed its shambling march.

Lor’themar released the breath he’d been holding, then leaned forward and began again to work against the chains on his arms. The links were biting into his knuckles now, but they were beginning to loosen infinitesimally—

The wagon rocked more violently this time; the partially-rotted wood creaked and groaned as the same zombie and another in even worse repair leapt onto the wagon and scrambled in with Lor’themar. Sickly, milky-grey drool glistened in their mouths and dribbled down onto the floor as they advanced towards the chained elf, eyes blank with hunger.

With a snarl and a last, desperate twist and jerk, Lor’themar’s right arm came free of the chains, slashed and bloodied but not pouring enough to kill him… yet. In the same instant, both of the undead horrors charged him, one letting out a warbling, high-pitched yowl as it reached for his bloodied arm.

Lor’themar rolled clumsily to the side, running into a shoddily-sealed crate of armor before somehow managing to drag himself to his feet and snagging the ugly knife at the yowling zombie’s hip. Before the thing could turn around, Lor’themar brought the blade down across its arm and nearly severing the limb.

The second zombie shoved its competition out of the way and swiped at Lor’themar with a hiss—clearly this one didn’t have quite the same use of its vocal chords as the other, which for the moment poked dumbly at its arm as though it wasn’t sure why the limb was hanging by a few jerky-like muscles.

Before the scuffle could go much further, the wagon jerked to a stop so sharp that all three of the combatants inside toppled against each other; Lor’themar spat a particularly foul oath and kicked the better-preserved zombie off of him, then rolled off the one now entirely missing its arm before its remaining hand could close on any part of him.

A loud, clear voice outside the wagon spat something in the same language Lor’themar had heard the skeleton from before rasp, and both zombies stiffened and seemed to cower for a moment before reluctantly scrambling back out of the wagon; the creature Lor’themar had disarmed and hacked at even stopped and picked its arm up almost robotically before following its companion outside… although it also paused to cast Lor’themar a final sorrowful look before disappearing over the wall of the wagon.

Lor’themar stiffened as the sound of hooves on frost-hardened ground reached his ears, growing louder as the beast (and likely a rider mounted thereon) drew close to the wagon… and then stopped. There was a brief silence, then the dull thump of someone dismounting and another short silence—and then the back of the wagon opened down, allowing a handful of skeletons to swarm in.

Lor’themar didn’t have time to do more than raise his stolen knife in defense before the bone soldiers had grabbed him and wrestled him to the floor, their bones clicking and creaking like a basket of castanets as they kept him pinned and forced the knife out of his hand. The elf struggled against them, but with his ankles still securely chained, the blood flowing from his arm only now beginning to slow, and a good portion of his energy spent freeing himself and then keeping himself from becoming a meal, there wasn’t much more he could do other than squirm uselessly and curse a bloody blue streak at the undead.

"Oh, good," someone spoke from behind the wagon. "You’ve still got plenty of fight left in you after all. I was beginning to think you’d gone and died on me."

Lor’themar craned his head to see Arthas standing there, watching him with his arms folded across his chest and that damned patronizing smirk plastered on his sickly pale face.

"What would it matter if I had?" Lor’themar spat, regretting the words almost as soon as they left his mouth. Brilliant; clever thing that he was, perhaps if he managed to escape with his life he should go waltzing into troll territory and mock their rituals to their faces, as well.

Arthas’s smirk turned into a razor-sharp grin as he answered, “Oh, I don’t want you to die just yet. That would take all the fun out of it.”

"Out of wh—"

For the second time in as many days, a heavy blow came down across the back of Lor’themar’s head, knocking the captive ranger unconscious once more. As he slid again into blackness, he vaguely registered Arthas ordering the skeletons pinning him down to bind his arms again—and do so properly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started out as a handful of long, late-hour conversations between WinterEnchantment and me about Winty's idea for an Arthamar story involving Lor'themar becoming a brainwashed consort to Arthas after impressing him with his sheer ferocity in battle. I finally got the itch to write it, and this story is the result.
> 
> This is a long giftfic for Winty, but I've also listed her as a co-writer because the initial idea was hers, and if she had never brought it up I might never have started writing it!


	2. Midnight Hour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for cannibalism and heavily implied forced cannibalism, as well as the wanton murder of innocent people belonging to literally every age group, gender, and health status. Yes, even little children. You've been warned.

The next time Lor’themar awoke, the Scourge forces had settled in the thick forests near a small farming community.

The ranger’s ears rang and his skull felt ready to explode; his memories of the previous day were once again fuzzy and incoherent. As he shifted forward from the tree he had been propped against, he felt the chains around his arms dig into his skin so much that blood began to dribble around the links—though the pain was not so great as it should have been, which likely meant the skin had already been broken and stopped actively bleeding before he woke.

In fact, judging by how much tighter the chains were now, that had probably been when his bindings had been fixed… which was likely after someone discovered his brawl with those two damnable sacks of rotted flesh.

He cursed his scattered memory, then turned his eyes to his new surroundings.

This was… a redwood forest. A surprisingly healthy one, considering the Scourge presence—although Lor’themar swore he could see the plant life withering all around him. The undergrowth seemed to actively wilt and turn a frosted brown in color; the very soil itself had taken on a sickly, foamy appearance that could not possibly have harbored such a grand forest as this once was.

Lor’themar’s heart ached to see this—to see this much life trampled and tainted and sickened by the presence of something so wholly vile as the Scourge. He had lived all his life surrounded by and later defending the once untouched lands of Quel’Thalas; the suffering of the earth was his suffering, as well.

He shook his head as if to clear it, then winced and sat back again with a muted groan as his skullcap promptly tried to rocket out of his head. For a moment that renewed pain swamped him; when he could think clearly again, he began to watch the rambling, stinking, rotting army surrounding him on every side—and to scan the gaps in reanimated bodies for any sign of other living captives.

He found none, though he doubted that was because there were none. The Scourge were restless, no doubt able to smell the living bodies just a few hundred yards away. Trying to see anything through such a mobile gathering would be almost impossible; something could approach him and Lor’themar likely wouldn’t notice—

—Until it was on top of him, like the dark-robed cultist who knelt down beside him with a dish half-loaded with cooked meat. Lor’themar flinched and bared his teeth at the sallow-faced woman; she stared back at him with all the thin patience of a parent waiting for a disobedient child to stop throwing a tantrum.

"And what a frightening creature you make, all bound and bloodied," the cultist commented dryly as she cut a bit of meat, speared it on her knife, and held it up to Lor’themar’s mouth. "I’ve brung you food, on Lord Arthas’s orders." When Lor’themar made no response and no move towards the food, she snorted and said, "I was you, I’d eat. Better that than whatever he’ll do if you don’t.”

Lor’themar glowered at the woman and ground his teeth tight against each other. No doubt the undercooked bit of meat in front of him had been poisoned somehow; he’d rather be ripped to pieces than die some slow, thrice-painful death because he was fool enough to eat tainted food.

"Stubborn fool," the cultist sighed. "It’s safe food, just a bit raw. Raw meat hasn’t ever killed no one, not in my experience."

"And exactly what kind of meat is that?” Lor’themar snapped, spitting the words out through clenched teeth so the woman had no opening to force the bit on her knife into his mouth while he spoke.

"Pork." The woman’s eyes stayed steady on his.

Lor’themar would have laughed were he in a more favorable position. Pork. Of course she would call it pork. Just like the trolls he had battled compared it to pork—both in the way it supposedly tasted and in the way it cooked. He remembered very vividly the first time he’d encountered the Amani’s version of pork. He had been younger then, and initially he had been confused—how could they have gotten pork when there were no wild boar in the lands they inhabited?

He had vomited when he had discovered what had remained of the desecrated elven corpses not twenty yards from the campfire. Now, however, his stomach was much stronger than that… and his mind was much sharper.

The ranger snorted and turned his head away. He would starve before he ate _that_

The cultist echoed his snort. Out of the corner of his eye, Lor’themar saw her shift to the right—

Pain shot through his arm as she grabbed a length of the chain and pulled hard, creating deep, biting slashes in his skin. Lor’themar started to yell, and in the next second the ‘pork’ had been shoved into his mouth and the cultist had slammed his jaw shut, tilting his head back so far that it became difficult to breathe around the mouthful he could now no longer open his mouth enough to spit out. Bony as she was, this woman was impossibly strong… or he had lost more of his strength than he thought.

In any event, she had yet to let him go, and besides the difficulty he was having drawing a decent breath, Lor’themar didn’t relish having his throat exposed in the middle of an enemy encampment where he was of more use to them dead than alive. Gritting his teeth again, he swallowed the grizzly mouthful whole, thankful that it had at least been small enough to go down his esophagus without too much hassle.

The cultist finally let him go; when she turned to a nearby bone soldier, Lor’themar tried making himself choke up the mouthful, only to snarl again as the woman gave another jerk on the chains binding his arms (had enough length been left over that he was tethered to the ground with the blasted thing? She kept jerking her handful downwards…)

"None of that," the woman told him as the bone soldier wandered over. Lor’themar felt the chain change hands from the cultist to the skeleton, and then the former was cutting another bite of ‘pork’ and spearing it on her knife. "Behave, or we’ll be doing this the hard way."

Lor’themar growled as the skeleton gave a sharp tug on the chains, as if any of them needed a demonstration.

In the end, the ranger wasn’t left with much choice but to cooperate. Gritting his teeth only earned him another painful jerk that sent those damned spiked chains sawing into his skin until he shouted again, and the few times he’d bit the cultist, she had only laughed and boxed him hard across his ears, sending dizzying pain rocketing through his skull and neck. Eventually, Lor’themar gave up and accepted the food (grudgingly), looking at everything but the morsels he was fed and shutting his mind away from what was happening.

Once he started cooperating, the whole disgusting process went along rather quickly, and soon the plate was mercifully empty. Without another word, the cultist gathered it and her knife up and walked away with the bone soldier in tow, leaving Lor’themar alone with himself again.

The taste of the meat lingered in his mouth. Behind his disgust, Lor’themar’s survival instincts were beginning to kick in again, causing him to justify to himself the horrid things he had endured in the last few days.

He was still being kept alive; whatever their reason, they wanted him alive, and they wanted him in somewhat decent condition. To that end, they were feeding him, and the meat would give him back some of his energy, as well as help him regain his strength and speed his body’s recovery.

…And it did taste very much like pork.

Unseen by the increasingly despondent elf, Arthas watched the feeding with a smirk plain on his face. It amused him to no end to watch the man fight his captors; it was as though he still believed he had some chance of escaping when he was surrounded on all sides by an army that could not care less if he died or lost a limb.

At least the elf knew when to quit, Arthas mused as Lor’themar finallystarted willingly eating. A wise decision, considering it was the only meal he would get until tomorrow night—if he was lucky.

Something would have to be done about his arms, though. While using the chains to force him to cooperate was effective, it wouldn’t do to let the idiot keep bleeding all over the place. For one thing, he was surrounded by cannibalistic undead, and had already nearly become a meal for two of them; for another, if he continued losing so much blood he would probably die.

Normally the latter would not bother the death knight so much, considering the circumstances… but Arthas didn’t want him dead just yet. That would take all the fun out of breaking him.

Still smirking, the death knight turned his attention to the little village just beyond the forest. Already lights were beginning to go out in some of the thatch-roofed cottages, though the sun had not quite dipped below the horizon line yet—but Arthas intended to attack when every house was dark.

He didn’t need the cover of darkness, of course; these were unarmed, entirely hapless peasants who had no sense of the danger lurking beyond their little village. But it seemed so very fitting that death should rain down on them in the shadows of the night, when their precious Light was nowhere to be seen and their own eyes already showed them monsters that were not there—at least, not yet.

And the elf would have only a few bone soldiers for company during the attack; Arthas was keen to see how badly he would be shaken by the screams of those he was close enough to hear but too weak to help.

This was going to be a very interesting night, indeed.

~~~

It was sometime after nightfall when the Scourge suddenly began to wander all in the same direction—straight towards the farming village, the lights of which had all gone out as the last of its inhabitants had gone to bed moments ago. Two or three of the best-preserved among them—death knights under Arthas’s command—carried torches that burned with the same smothered light as any that could be found within an unused catacomb, and many of the more decayed creatures had already begun to drool.

Despite the gruesome anticipation emanating from them all, the rambling horde was as silent as the graves they should all still rest within; not even a moan or rasping hiss escaped them as they moved silently on towards the innocents below. Even the rattling of the bone soldiers seemed subdued, as though they somehow still possessed enough awareness to move carefully and avoid rousing their unsuspecting prey.

Lor’themar strained against his chains, snarling as he watched the undead army march past him. If he could just get free somehow, could cause just enough of a disturbance to rouse at least some of the people beyond the trees…

Something cold and rigid clapped onto his shoulder and shoved the ranger back against the tree; Lor’themar snarled again as those damned chains bit into his arms and back at the impact, then looked up to see four bone soldiers standing (or in one’s case, crouched) around him, looking down at him with sockets that glowed an even brighter red in the darkness of the night. Clearly, Arthas was taking no chances with his captive while the rest of his army destroyed yet another gathering of innocents.

The skeleton crouching next to him continued to hold his shoulder pinned to the tree; the other three somehow managed to convey a readiness to help their comrade despite their lack of skin, muscles, or facial features. Enraged again by their watchfulness, Lor’themar snarled and tried to fight against the skeletons, desperate to warn someone down in the village below however he could.

One or two of the marching undead stopped to give a cursory sniff in Lor’themar’s direction as the other three skeletons piled onto the ranger, each grabbing hold of his arms or clutching a bony handful of his _hair_ as he struggled and spat the foulest curses he could think of at every creature within earshot.

Pain skittered through his left cheek as one bony fist hit him hard across the face, opening a myriad of shallow cuts in his skin and causing stars to flicker behind his eyelids. For a moment he was silent, reeling from the blow; in another few seconds he was fighting and shouting once more, albeit somewhat more clumsily than before as his head continued to spin. How many times had he been slugged in the last few days…?

The ranks of the Scourge were moving quickly now, their eyes (or eye sockets, or merely whatever passed for their faces) intent on the farming village. A glance in the same direction treated Lor’themar to the sight of one or two of the cottages closer beginning to light up again—his plan worked. The villagers were beginning to wake up, and the nearest soldiers of the Scourge were still well enough away to give the villagers some chance of fleeing.

The ghouls and skeletons closest to Lor’themar and his guards parted suddenly, their movements even jerkier than usual with clear surprise as Arthas walked towards the captive elf, his face infuriatingly smug. The skeleton sitting on Lor’themar’s legs (and purposely digging its heels in) moved to the side to let the death knight take its place—and he did, settling down hard on Lor’themar’s legs and smirking when the elf growled at the painful impact.

"Don’t you know when to quit?" the human chuckled, flicking a strand of hair from Lor’themar’s face and grinning when the other man spat a particularly nasty obscenity at him. "You haven’t saved any of those poor fools down there. You’ve only robbed them of the chance to die in their sleep—now they’ll get to see exactly what will hack them to bits, exactly what they’ll turn into themselves."

He gestured with a wave of one arm to the still-marching army behind him. “Do you think those peasants, those weak, tiring mortals down there can outrun my army? Do you think if they take up arms against us it will matter?”

Lor’themar spat in his face.

The skeleton holding his hair jerked its hand back, slamming Lor’themar’s head against the tree and once again stirring his enduring migraine back into the chain explosion it had been the afternoon before. Through the ringing in his ears, Lor’themar barely registered Arthas laughing and waving a hand to still the skeletons.

A gauntleted hand gripped Lor’themar by the jaw and forced his head to the side, where his eyes inevitably locked onto the village once again. Two mounted death knights rode towards the cottages now, their swords drawn. Behind them ran three ghouls who still dripped fresh earth and uprooted grass—freshly raised, then.

"Whether they see us coming or not, those people will die tonight," Arthas murmured. "And there will be nothing you can do but watch and listen as they are slain."

He shoved away from Lor’themar, slamming his head into the tree again before getting to his feet and locking eyes with one of the skeleton guards still holding the elf in place.

"Make sure he watches," Arthas ordered. "I want him to see that no one escapes the Scourge." With that, he turned and followed his hellish soldiers down to the village, one hand upon the hilt of Frostmourne.

Lor’themar struggled again, but his guards and the chains held him fast; the same skeleton gripping his hair took his jaw in its other hand and forced him to look back at the village again, just in time for the five Scourge soldiers leading the charge to reach the nearest cottage.

The three ghouls tore through the walls of the home as though they were built of paper rather than wood and plaster; seconds later the first screams tore through the night, rousing the rest of the village—too late. The mounted death knights fell upon the first family to try to run; skeletons and ghouls tore into an elderly couple who stumbled outside moments after their cottage went up in flames.

Lor’themar cried out and fought even harder, fury pulsing through him as he watched the slaughter continue. Vaguely he registered the pain in his arms increasing as he pulled violently against the chains; out of the corner of his eye he saw one skeleton’s hand come away from his arm smeared with his blood before it latched onto the front of his vest and tried to pin him back against the tree again.

The ranger gave a single, furious twist with his whole body and sent one of the skeletons staggering into its nearest comrade. A second twist seemed to jerk the chain loose that tethered him to the tree, for there was the sound of saronite creaking against itself and wood splintering.

By now the skeletons had gathered themselves again and were actively wrapping their arms around his own, seeming to strain to hold him down as the last of the Scourge army charged past. Lor’themar let out a guttural roar and heaved again, and this time the chain on his arms snapped free of the trunk, sending him and the skeletons tumbling forward.

The skeletons scrambled to restrain him as he continued to thrash; the chains biting into his ankles were beginning to creak now, and felt somewhat looser as Lor’themar’s struggles began to wear at the links.

One of the cultists bringing up the rear of the army stopped and watched for a moment, then raised one ashen-skinned hand and mouthed something Lor’themar couldn’t have heard even if he hadn’t been screaming a vicious strand of vulgarities. Seconds later a bolt of searing, dark magic struck Lor’themar’s back; Lor’themar cried out as his entire torso seemed to freeze for a moment before agony knifed through him like hundreds of shards of ice burying themselves in his body.

That blow took the fight out of the captive elf; he sagged against the ground, still growling as his chest heaved with exertion and lingering pain. The skeletons easily heaved him back against the tree, slamming him carelessly against the damaged trunk and paying him no heed when he snarled at the splinters that stabbed into his back and arms. One skeleton wrapped the tether firmly around its hand; another jerked Lor’themar’s head back to the burning village, while the final two sat down again on his legs and worked to tighten the chains binding his feet together.

Still in debilitating pain, and having used up what strength and energy he had recovered, Lor’themar could do nothing but watch and listen as the innocents below were systematically slaughtered and raised as more soldiers for Arthas’s ever-growing army—just as the death knight had said it would be.

~~~

The village fell in under half an hour; Arthas watched on with quiet pleasure as another gaggle of hapless mortals were turned into untiring, utterly loyal soldiers of the Scourge.

Or… most of them were, at least. The king’s eyes immediately fell upon the same plaintive zombie that had lost an arm trying to gnaw on Lor’themar, and a sharp grin spread across his features as he spotted the child-sized, badly-burned corpse the creature huddled over as it stared almost mournfully at him from across the village’s sole street. At his nod, the wretch turned and began to eat in earnest, making a mess that would put off a starving warg and snarling at anyone else that glanced its way.

Chuckling, Arthas turned and looked speculatively up at the low hill where his prisoner was undoubtedly still watching. How had the elf fared, he wondered, as he had watched the slaughter unfold below? He wondered how much of a fight the idiot had put up, and how much it had taken to subdue him when he had.

A last, terrified shriek went up behind Arthas, cut short by a wet, slicing grind as a saronite blade fell upon the last living human in the village. Moments later, one of Arthas’s death knights appeared with his armor sprayed and dripping with fresh blood; a ghoul hobbled eagerly along behind him, seeming almost to crumble in the firelight as fresh earth fell from its head and arms.

Arthas cast his eyes once more around the burning village, noting with a twisted grin that some of the first cottages to have gone ablaze had already burned down to blackened, smoldering skeletons with bits of still-burning thatch littering their floors. The street was almost entirely red with the blood that had been shed, and the pitchforks and hunting knives taken up as arms by some of the stupider villagers lay scattered in that blood, broken and burnt.

It was a scene of utter annihilation, and the single, blackened skeleton left by that perpetually hungry soldier would ensure any who came across the village after they left would know exactly what had taken place here.

Not, of course, that Arthas intended to leave any standing who would be shocked by a scene such as this.

The champion was satisfied; it was time to return to their camp and prepare to continue their march on Dalaran. And it was time to see how that bull-headed elf was faring now, and to have someone patch up whatever damage he had done to himself this time.

Arthas turned away from the child’s remains and lead his army back without a single backward glance at the carnage he had wrought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As the first eight parts of the story are posted to tumblr as well, the A3O version here is four chapters 'behind', because I combined the shorter tumblr-style chapters to create longer chapters better suited to a fanfiction website. In other words, chapter one here consists of parts one and two on tumblr, and this chapter is parts three and four, and so on.


	3. All the Truth I Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for gore, unwanted touching, and bad cannibalism puns.

It had been three days since the Sunwell had been lost to the high elves. Three days since Lor’themar’s grand last stand had ended in the deaths of hundreds of the elves he had led… and likely Lor’themar’s death, as well.

Halduron had been unresponsive to anyone who had attempted to speak with him in the last few days; after leading his band of survivors home to what was left of Silvermoon City, the acting Ranger-General had retreated in on himself, shutting himself away from the others whenever he could and hiding behind an utterly dispassionate mask on those occasions when he felt well enough to make a round and check on those survivors who had received the heftiest injuries.

Even now, on the fourth night since the Sunwell’s explosion, he had barely managed to get through half of the food he’d been brought before shoving the plate away and staring out the window of one of the only rooms of the Sunstrider Spire that had been left mostly intact when the Scourge had hit. It had been decided before Lor’themar’s last march against the Scourge that those acting as leaders of their battered, broken race would shelter here, as well is those too injured or weak to move about on their own… but Lor’themar was supposed to have beenwith them when they returned to the city.

Instead Halduron and one or two others slept alone, robbed of the elf they had all turned to for leadership when their king and convocation and Sylvanas had all been ripped away from them. The room was empty and cold without Lor’themar—that much everyone had agreed on. Merely seeing him go down had cut through everyone still standing; if Halduron had not ordered the retreat when he had, he had no doubt many dozens more of his ragtag army would have fallen, cut down as they reeled from what they had witnessed.

Halduron felt a hole, ragged and raw, gaping in his chest as he stared out over the ruined city of the high elves. From glory and beauty, they had fallen to ashes and rubble in a matter of weeks—and from easygoing friendship with one of the greatest men he had ever known, Halduron now found himself treading water in an ocean of grief for a fallen friend and brother.

It would only take letting his head dip below the surface once to lose himself forever.

~~~

Lor’themar’s vision had begun to darken as he watched more and more of the village burn and its inhabitants fall, only to be risen again as ghoulish caricatures of themselves. Time had seemed to fold in on itself; the events unfolding before him had blurred together until all he knew was one long, crazed moment of screams and fire and reanimated death.

When his senses returned to him, the village smoldered lifelessly; only a final few dying embers still glowed a dim reddish-orange, and those were fading fast. He could see no fallen forms among the rubble—not that he had expected to. If anyone had not been turned, it was likely they had been or one of their former friends or relatives. Lor’themar wasn’t sure which was worse.

Pain lanced dully through his arm, bringing his attention at last to the fact that his arms were no longer chained behind him—instead, one was held by two bone soldiers (evidently even Arthas would not risk anything retaining the ability the actually eat coming near his prisoner), and the other was kept immobile by a third skeleton while the same cultist who had force-fed him earlier tended to the deep, ugly gashes wrapping all around his forearm.

"Don’t go thinking to struggle," the cultist warned him without looking up from her work. "You’re in enough trouble as it stands with him. Threw a fit, he did. Called the four guarding you incompetent, took one’s head off—that one’s still looking for its head, last I seen of it.”

Lor’themar didn’t answer; he could barely muster the energy to grunt as a swell of sickly bluish-gray magic swirled from the woman’s fingertips and seeped into his wounds like a gaseous sludge, arousing a sharp, icy pain in the exposed meat and muscle as his arm sewed itself together with a gut-churning series of squelches.

It took a full minute for the healing process to finish with his right arm, and when it did there were still several large, angry pink marks marking his skin where the gashes had been. It was only then that Lor’themar noticed the dried blood that should have still colored his arm an ugly copper-red had been thoroughly cleaned away; apparently even the sight of dried blood could prove to be too much temptation for some of the weaker-willed creatures wandering aimlessly about once more.

"Gimme the other one," the woman ordered the skeletons pinning his left arm.

Had they not kept such a tight grip on the mangled limb, Lor’themar might have fallen over when they jerked it around for the woman to work on. As it was, Lor’themar could do little else but growl feebly and give such a pathetic tug against those bony grips that he doubted they even felt the backward pull.

"Don’t twitch too much, or you’ll heal funny," the woman warned him. She still had yet to look Lor’themar in the eye. "You’re lucky he wants you living, or you’d be ghoul food by now. Show a little gratitude afore he decides to change his mind."

The second healing took even longer than the first, and seemed to Lor’themar to be even more painful—rightly so, since his left arm had been bound in such a way that it had taken the brunt of the abuse inflicted by the skeletons and his own frenzied struggles. The gashes here were deeper, and in some places there was the bright white flash of a few centimeters of exposed bone.

By the time his arm was finished, the ranger had his wits about him once more, and had enough strength to put up a more decent struggle when the skeletons jerked him forward to allow the cultist access to his back, which felt as though it had been scraped at with sandpaper, then burned, then stuck unprotected against a glacier, then scraped again with dirt and wood splinters.

The woman finally growled low in her throat and smacked Lor’themar across the back of his head—not hard enough to knock him out, but certainly enough to remind him that his head was stillkilling him.

"No more of that," she snapped. "D’you want your back fixed or don’t you?"

Lor’themar was about to respond when another voice cut in coldly, “I don’t believe I ever left that up to him.”

Lor’themar looked up as far as he could manage to see Arthas standing over him, arms crossed over his chest and irritation plain on his features as he glared down at the elf. Behind him, Lor’themar vaguely registered the cultist’s hands twitch for a moment at the bastard prince’s sudden appearance.

"Apologies, my Lord," the cultist said. She fell silent then, and Lor’themar flinched and tried to pull away as he felt the blade of a knife begin to cut the back of his vest up along the center.

One booted foot came down none too gently on one of his ankles (which were, for the moment, unbound and as gored as his arms had been.) Lor’themar snarled, then looked up and glared at Arthas as the impact caused the pain in his ankle to spike. Arthas returned the look coolly; the irritation lingered still on his face.

"Sit still and let her do her work, elf," Arthas told him flatly, "unless you want me to give her more to do."

Lor’themar snarled, but was left with little choice now that Arthas stood over him, placing a good portion of his weight on the ranger’s ankle and resting one hand almost casually upon the hilt of Frostmourne. With another growl, Lor’themar stopped pulling against the skeletons and ground his teeth as his vest and the linen shirt underneath were cut away, laying bare what he could only imagine was the ravaged skin beneath.

The cultist let out a low click with her tongue, and Lor’themar hissed in pain as her fingertips grazed against his back; seconds later something jagged and splintering was ripped from his skin, and the ranger couldn’t quite bite back the snarl he let out as a result. Arthas snorted in amusement, but didn’t comment on the show of weakness—and Lor’themar didn’t plan to let it happen again.

After a moment, however, Arthas appeared to grow bored; without a word the death knight moved off of Lor’themar’s ankle to get a look at the damage for himself. Before the elf could try to fight against the skeletons again, a hand came down on the top of his head.

Arthas didn’t grip his hair, nor did he grip Lor’themar’s head or try to twist his neck—and the seeming carelessness of his gesture made Lor’themar stiffen with a strangled whimper he could only pray no one had noticed.

No one reacted to it, in any event; the woman continued working to rip the shards out of his back, the skeletons did not turn to look at him with their empty sockets, and Arthas did not make any comment… nor did he remove his damned hand from Lor’themar’s scalp. Lor’themar swallowed hard and closed his eyes, desperate to ignore the touch as he focused instead on the conversation Arthas was having with his cultist—or tried to, in any event.

"One elf gave you enough trouble that you felt the need to blast him?" Arthas was asking. He sounded incredulous, but there was the faintest note of… of humor, Lor’themar thought helplessly. Why wasn’t he taking his damn hand away?!

"By then he’d broke the chains off the tree, Lord," the cultist answered. "The skeletons looked like they was having trouble getting him quiet again, and—"

"And you hit him with a spell powerful enough to lodge shards of the tree in his back?"

"No, see, that was after the spell hit him, Lord, when they was shoving him back against the tree. He’d tore the chains loose, and there was shards of wood still hanging loose when they tossed him back against the tree." The woman’s voice trembled slightly; apparently even she was smart enough not to tangle with Arthas.

Lor’themar’s eyes rolled back for an instant as Arthas’s fingertips dug into his head slightly; did the bastard realizewhat he was doing to him?! Did he knowjust how sensitive Lor’themar’s people were to physical contact of this nature?

The healing done to his back seemed to take an agonizing eternity, and Arthas kept digging his fingers into the top of Lor’themar’s scalp at odd intervals—it was almost as though it was a habit of the bastard’s, an automatic response to anything that made him pause and mull over what he had seen or heard.

Finally, the last pangs faded from Lor’themar’s back, and with a final, irritating prick as the last splinter was pulled from his back, the cultist sat back with a sigh and reported, “That should do, Lord. Don’t seem to be any more marks.”

"Good." Arthas’s tone was clinical now, but at the first tiny upward tilt of Lor’themar’s head his grip tightened, sending another shiver down the ranger’s spine as he ordered, "Move on to his ankles. I don’t want him tempting any of our soldiers more than he already does merely by breathing."

Lor’themar held perfectly still as the cultist moved back into his line of vision, keeping his eyes down on his legs and forcing himself to relax as much as he could manage… until she reached for the ankle Arthas had stepped on, at which point the elf jerked both legs under him as well as he could without the ability to shift his weight freely.

Arthas snorted, then knelt next to him, clutched a handful of Lor’themar’s hair, and jerked his head back so he was forced to look him in the eye again.

"Just sit still, you idiot," the human told him. "The rebelliousness is starting to lose its charm."

Lor’themar snarled, but his strength had not returned to him enough that he could put up any decent fight against Arthas and the three skeletons holding him down. Within a matter of minutes the elf’s ankles had been mended as well, leaving him whole and very, very annoyed.

Releasing Lor’themar at last, Arthas dismissed the cultist and called for the skeletons to bind his prisoner’s ankles and arms again, all in the same hideous language Lor’themar had come to decide must be the laguage of the Scourge.

The skeletons first wrestled the elf into a coarse cotton tunic that bore scorch marks and still-damp bloodstains and then wrapped Lor’themar’s ankles and arms in rough strips of leather before binding him with those barbed, bloodied chains again. Lor’themar fought with them the entire time as Arthas looked on, but in the end it was for naught. He was bound just as tightly as before… though he hadn’t been tethered to the tree yet.

He found out why a moment later, when Arthas himself grabbed him by one arm and dragged the still-struggling elf to a supply wagon and tossed him unceremoniously in.

"Try to behave yourself this time, elf," the human taunted as Lor’themar groaned at the impact. As quick as a snakestrike, Arthas reached out and caught one of Lor’themar’s ear tips between his thumb and forefinger; Lor’themar’s eyes rolled back again as Arthas rubbed the sensitive organ almost speculatively. A low, rasping hiss seethed through Lor’themar’s clenched teeth.

Just as suddenly as he had started, Arthas released the elf’s ear and smirked at his prisoner as Lor’themar once again began glaring furiously at him.

"Enjoy the ride," the death knight chuckled as three bone soldiers climbed into the wagon with Lor’themar.

The back of the wagon slammed shut, and in another few moments the transport jerked to a start as the undead army continued on its way to Dalaran.

~~~

_Long-fingered hands ran through hair the color of cornsilk; soft fingertips stroked against the skin of the man’s scalp now and then, drawing low, pleased rumbles from the other’s throat as his head tilted back, neck stretching out like a fluid thing._

_"You purr like any of the lynxes," a woman’s voice teased the man. "I wonder if you leave marks like they do, as well?"_

_The man’s brown eyes flickered open as he shifted to look at his companion; mischief danced in his gaze as he responded, “You are certainly welcome to find out, Ameniel—as long as you aren’t supposed to be on watch soon.” A wicked grin flashed across his features, startling the woman—it wasn’t often he looked so roguish._

_The woman laughed and twined her arms about his shoulders, then leaned down to kiss the side of his jaw before she murmured, “Oh, I’m sure I can handle whatever you can throw at me, Lor’themar…”_

~~~

Arthas smirked as he pulled his hand away from the head of one of his newer ghouls; the creature groaned feebly and wandered clumsily away, likely totally ignorant as to what had just happened.

The death knight scratched his chin thoughtfully as he surveyed his forces. It was a pity that memory ended as soon as it did; he would have enjoyed seeing just how much trouble that elf could really be in bed. Still, it and the other scattered flashes would serve the human well down the road. From what he had seen so far, the elves were not only extremely sensitive to touch, but seemed to crave it the way some humans craved ale and drugs.

Arthas’s smirk became a razor of a grin. He would enjoy putting that to the test in the days to come.

His eyes strayed to the wagon where the elf and his three bone guards rode; over the last two days of travel, the amount of trouble his prisoner had caused had been disappointingly minimal. In fact, other than biting a cultist who tried to feed him and aiming a feeble kick at one of the skeletons who moved to restrain him, the captive man had become almost docile, glaring sullenly up at Arthas whenever he rode close to look in on him but saying and doing little else.

That wasn’t going to work. Despite his earlier words to the contrary, Arthas rather enjoyed watching his prisoner try to beat his way free again. If he was already resigning himself to the fact that he was well and truly trapped, and that there was no chance of escape, that might mean Arthas had judged the elf poorly—even despite all of those stolen memories that seemed to prove he would be a prize worth the effort.

Perhaps it wasn’t his freedom that would best stimulate the elf to rebellion; remembering his frenzied attempts to escape and help the village the Scourge had sacked a few nights before, Arthas began to wonder if threatening the safety of others would reignite the fire in Lor’themar’s blood… especially if those others happened to be close enough that he might see some opportunity to help them.

And perhaps it would also be worth the effort to let him believe he was not the only living prisoner—that there were other elves kept as he was for whatever ends he must have convinced himself Arthas sought to achieve. If nothing else, it should put the desire to fight his captors back in the fair-haired elf’s head.

Lor’themar’s spirits had sunk to a dismal new low in the last few days. Between the horror of being force-fed meat he knew was not ‘pork’; the utter despair of watching so many innocents slain and raised mere yards from where he had been bound; and the torment of Arthas’s fleeting touches to his scalp and eartip, the elf was finding it hard to work up any sort of fight against his captors—and when he could, the results were sickeningly pathetic.

Still… the will to fight was still there, roiling under the emotional exhaustion that held him fast in this fog of apathy. He could feel it—could feel the indignation at his continued captivity, the utter hatred for the monsters that mulled all around him. It was subdued now, smoldering still, but it grew stronger by the day.

His ears pricked slightly at the sound of approaching hoofbeats—the bastard prince again, no doubt. Lor’themar raised his eyes just enough to glare as the death knight rode close once again (how many times had he done this since the army had left the decimated village? Lor’themar had long stopped counting.)

He met Arthas’s calculating stare unflinchingly, his lips curled in the beginnings of a snarl. No matter how weary he was, he would not allow Arthas the satisfaction of thinking he had already given up. Lor’themar wouldbe free of these beasts—would return to his people and help them recover from the unholy assault that had left them broken and weary even before their final stand at the Sunwell—and nothing Arthas or his Scourge do to him in the meantime would break him.

He would not allow it.

Arthas narrowed his eyes, seeming a bit disappointed that Lor’themar wasn’t spitting every vile curse he could come up with at him. Despite his weariness, Lor’themar felt a flicker of grim satisfaction. Good; let the little runt be irritable. Perhaps he would do something just foolish enough to allow Lor’themar a chance to escape.

"I hope the ride isn’t too uncomfortable for you, elf," Arthas finally said. His voice dripped with sarcasm. "Your fellow prisoners seem to find their accommodations somewhat lacking—not that many of them have much strength to complain about it."

So there were others? Lor’themar tried to keep the shock off his face, but the revelation stirred the low-burning fight within him, urging it to flare up again. He had nearly convinced himself that he was alone, but now he could see how foolish the notion was. Of course there were other prisoners—other living people being dragged unwillingly along on the Scourge’s unending march.

He might be able to rally them somehow, to stir them to rebellion against their captors. If he waited, if he built up his strength to make a decent show of fighting against his own guards, perhaps one of the prisoners would be close enough to hear or even see the commotion and try to take advantage of the confusion it might cause. He had seen captive trolls behave the same way: if one began to cause trouble, it was never very long before others started acting up as well.

He was loath to compare anyone to the trolls he had battled, but it was the best plan he could come up with for now—and surely the same animal instincts that drove the trolls to fight their captors were present in humans and elves?

The ranger’s mind raced as he continued to glare wordlessly at Arthas. Of course the bastard had more prisoners; Lor’themar’s earlier guess that he would want examples must have been correct. After all, it wasn’t exactly out of character for the human pig.

Arthas bit back a smirk as he watched the elf’s eyes flicker momentarily with renewed defiance. He had guessed correctly, then; simply mentioning the possibility of other prisoners had already begun to rile the idiot up. As usual, he said nothing else to the elf as he turned his mount away from the wagon again. Let him simmer for a while and plot useless riot attempts. He was the only living creature here who did not willingly serve the Scourge—and even that would change in time.

Lor’themar watched Arthas ride off until the wagon’s splintered wall hid him from view once more, then lowered his head again and closed his eyes, willing himself to calm down. For now, he would remain cooperative, and allow his fetid wardens to think all fight had gone from their prisoner. Trying to fight them now would be idiotic: They would expect such an outburst and be on him before he could do more than aim a kick at one of his guards.

Patience, then; let them lower their guard over the next few days while he rested and gathered strength from the gruesome meat they fed him. In the meantime, he could only pray his fellow captives would do nothing foolish, that they would also cooperate and let the rambling undead believe them cowed. They would all need as much of their strength as they could recover if any of them were to have the chance to escape.

It was another three days before Arthas’s army stopped again. As before, Lor’themar was chained against the trunk of a large enough tree that his fiercest struggles would do little more than grind a deep gash into the wood—unfortunately, his skeleton guards remembered his last escape attempt and had looped the chain around the trunk rather than bolt it down in one spot.

Lor’themar watched the Scourge mill about again; it was difficult to keep his expression neutral and his body relaxed as he began to notice the same sense of anticipation that had preceded the rambling horde’s attack on the farming village. There must be another village nearby, then—another settlement of innocent people doomed to fall and rise again under the bastard responsible for killing them.

Rage ate at the ranger, but he forced the emotion out of his face before anyone—especially Arthas—could notice it. He couldn’t try to fight them now; he had tried that last time, before and during their attack. They would expect it this time, and he needed the Scourge to be caught off-guard if he or any of the other prisoners had any chance of escaping.

Thinking of the others made him begin to scan the surrounding area once again, his eyes straining for any sign of other living captives. He could spot none… but the army was impossibly vast, and so too would the space they occupied have to be for them to mull about so freely. Perhaps Arthas was simply keeping his prisoners just out of sight of one another in an attempt to make their situation seem even more hopeless than it already was.

Morning had turned to afternoon when a cultist—Lor’themar had heard one of her colleagues call her Dana at some point—came to him with his daily ration. Once again Lor’themar forced himself not to clamp his teeth shut or struggle against the woman who came to feed him with another chunk of ‘mystery meat’, as she had begun to call it after apparently deciding she needed an even more obvious euphemism than ‘pork’ for what she was forcing down his gullet once a day.

His stomach churned at the smell, and twice he gagged against a mouthful of the gruesome meal, but eventually he’d choked the last of it down and was left to himself and his unspeaking bone guards as the cultist stood and walked away again.

To his disgust, Lor’themar found it was getting easier each day to stomach the often undercooked meat; it had been two days since the last time he had vomited, and tonight he hardly felt sick at all, now that the scent wasn’t assailing him.

No matter—it was just a survival mechanism. If all went according to plan, soon he wouldn’t need to survive off of such grisly fare; that thought gave him some measure of grim anticipation, and helped to settle his stomach even further. Just a few more days. If he could hold out just a few days longer, he and hopefully at least a few of his fellow prisoners would be free from this nightmarish captivity.

~~~

It wasn’t an hour later that the Scourge began to move again, silent and steely-gazed as the death knights and more coherent bone soldiers steered them off towards their next poor victims. Lor’themar couldn’t see anything from where he was bound, but then it was still daylight and, once again, the Scourge where hidden well enough within the forest that their intended prey wouldn’t see them coming until it was already far too late.

Lor’themar was beginning to suspect they did this more to satisfy some sadistic love Arthas must have of bringing horror stories to life than they did to actually plan their attack where they couldn’t be seen—unless of course even the undead preferred not to have to chase their prey too much, which seemed ridiculous to Lor’themar.

It burned him to stay still, to watch the undead forces move out to swallow another village in shadow… but he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. To try to start any trouble now, when they would most expect it from him, could only result in failure.

As he watched the army move out, his gaze fell for a moment on one particular face—the face of one of the banshees, turned for the most part away from him. What he could see was just enough to strike him as familiar, very familiar, as though he had seen that particular creature before she had been resurrected and twisted. Lor’themar frowned and unconsciously leaned forward just a bit, trying to get a better look—

A hand came down on the top of Lor’themar’s head; as he had last time, the elf stiffened and ground his teeth as Arthas knelt next to him and said almost conversationally, “It’s a larger village this time; I’ll need more of my soldiers to take it down. I hope you can behave yourself this time,” he added a bit more frostily. “I don’t have time to waste putting you back together again because you were too stupid to sit still for a few hours.”

Indignant at the death knight’s words and having by now lost sight of the eerily familiar banshee, Lor’themar tore his gaze from the rest of the Scourge and greeted the human mongrel with a frigid stare. Arthas returned the look with no discernible emotion; a second later Lor’themar’s eyes rolled back for a moment as the human dug his fingertips into his scalp, sending another unwanted shiver of pleasure through his skin.

"Then again, that might not be an issue this time around," he barely registered Arthas saying as the pounding in his ears began to subside again. "After all, you’ve started to become as compliant as any of my ghouls."

Lor’themar couldn’t stop himself from flinching at that, even though it wasexactly what he wanted Arthas to think. The comment still dug under his skin; he would rather be cannibalized by some starved, half-mad troll than serve this monster.

Arthas noticed the flinch immediately, and for a moment he had to work to keep the irritation in his voice as he continued, “And yet you’re still the most defiant of our prisoners. The others have already started giving up, you know. I’m surprised only one of them’s dropped dead so far.”

Lor’themar’s blood ran chill, and suddenly Arthas’s hand on his head didn’t seem quite so substantial anymore. His heart, on the other hand, was beginning to pound hard against his ribcage.

Arthas turned his eyes to his forces again and moved his hand to play with a strand of Lor’themar’s hair as he added, “It was probably someone you knew, too—the dead one. He was an elf, in any event, and a ranger by the looks of him.” If he noticed the blood drain from Lor’themar’s face, he didn’t show it.

Lor’themar’s mind raced. There had been at least one other elf here with him—one other ranger. Who had it been? What had been done with the body?

As horrific as it was, behind his growing numbness Lor’themar hoped the dead prisoner had been cannibalized rather than resurrected. He had heard rumors that Arthas could see the memories and thoughts of any of his undead soldiers; if those rumors were true, if the elf who had fallen was now part of the Scourge, Arthas might have access to knowledge about high elves that could decrease Lor’themar’s or any elven prisoner’s chances of escape even more than they already were.

"In any case, he certainly knew you," Arthas was saying. "He’d probably still recognize you, too—not that it would keep him from trying to gnaw on you, of course." He laughed and added, "I might even let him take a bite or two. The irony would be delicious.”

Lor’themar lunged forward with a snarl, only to jerk to a sudden, sharp halt as the chains caught and held him fast against the tree. Other than narrow his eyes and lean back a mere fraction of an inch, Arthas gave the elf no reaction, and continued speaking as though he couldn’t hear the bark of the tree snapping and splintering under the chains.

"His memories are proving entertaining to watch," the death knight informed Lor’themar. "When I’ve finished my business with Dalaran, I might return to Quel’Thalas and pay your old friends a visit—starting with Halduron."

Lor’themar barely registered the chains snapping as he lunged for Arthas’s throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was incredibly difficult not to title this chapter 'Arthas the Giant Dickwaffle'. I went with 'All the Truth I Know' instead to spotlight the utter lack of actual truth Halduron and Lor'themar have access to right now, as well as the overabundance of knowledge the elven Scourge are able to provide Arthas concerning high elves in general and Lor'themar in particular.


	4. Heart with a Gaping Hole

Lor’themar came to his senses long after the Scourge forces moved out; his jaw throbbed somewhat and his ears rang as he lifted his head and tried to work out where he was and what had happened. Once again, his memories of the last hour or so were fuzzy and incoherent—evidently he had once again been knocked unconscious.

Vaguely he remembered Arthas crouching next to him, touching his head… then there was a sharp flash of red, which made no sense at all, and then his memory went blank. Had the death knight said something to make him lose his temper…?

"Oh, good," a familiar voice commented to his left. "You’re awake again. We was gettin’ worried you’d gone and slid into a coma. Bad habit, that."

Lor’themar turned his head to see Dana crouching just out of arm’s reach from him. A death knight—another human, though it wasn’t Arthas, thankfully—stood between them, seemingly watching the forest and paying no attention to Lor’themar, though the ranger knew better than to think the man wouldn’t be on him in an instant if he so much as looked at someone the wrong way.

Other than his two companions, the Scourge camp was comparatively empty; only two other death knights had stayed behind, along with a few handfuls of ghouls, zombies, skeletons, and two monstrous abominations.

Lor’themar started to lean forward, trying to get his eye on any of the other prisoners; the moment he moved, the death knight next to him shifted his weight, causing the leaf litter under his foot to crunch slightly.

That was clear enough for Lor’themar. Swallowing back a growl, the ranger sat back against the tree, wincing as the spiked chains around his arms bit into his back.

He had misstepped badly. He had allowed Arthas to get under his skin, had let his own temper get away from him just long enough to ruin all his careful waiting and planning. Now no amount of waiting, no amount of pretending to have been cowed would get these undead horrors to lower their guard—especially now that Arthas had seen firsthand that Lor’themar was still very much resistant.

He only hoped the other prisoners had heard the commotion and tried to slip away, or at the very least that it had rekindled the fight in some of them. The elf’s thoughts turned to the one prisoner who had already died; guilt washed through him as he wondered if the man had been captured at that ill-fated battle for the Sunwell. It would have been kinder for him if his body had been left to rot.

How many others had fallen for their choice to follow Lor’themar in his last stand against the Scourge? How many magi and warriors had been cut down? How many of the rangers Lor’themar had trained and fought alongside for years before the invasion had been torn to pieces? How many already broken families were now left to mourn yet another loss? And for what? A last, grim act of defiance that no one expected to walk away from in the first place?

Disgust burned in the back of his throat, threatening to overtake Lor’themar. The idea for that last stand had been his idea; whether his people had followed him willingly or not, the blame rested on his shoulders. He had known they would be fighting a losing battle and led them headlong into it all the same; every drop of blood his soldiers had shed was on his hands.

And then, as abruptly as if someone had hit a switch in him, Lor’themar’s despair turned to anger.

What else could he have done? What else  _should_  he have done? Would it have been better to lead those elves still able to fight away to lick their wounds and cower in their broken city while these beasts desecrated their Sunwell unchallenged? The quel’dorei did not run or hide—not from the undead, and certainly not from the human mongrel who lead them.

And yet… leading his remaining forces to the Sunwell had been hopeless from the start. In the end, he had done nothing but gotten himself and at least one other captured, and led Light knew how many more people to their deaths—and likely to their new unlives as more rambling, mindless zombies. Wouldn’t it have been better to have led his forces away, to allow them to begin to regroup and recover their strength so that they could one day avenge their inevitable loss?

Lor’themar ground his teeth and shook his head slightly; there was a simple, bitter answer to both questions: No.

It would have been disgrace to run away at the end; the quel’dorei had already sacrificed far too much to run from one last, defiant battle to keep their Sunwell out of the hands of the Scourge, even knowing their chances ofsurviving that battle were slim. On the other hand, now his people were even fewer in number, and Lor’themar had likely lost many more of his friends and comrades before the Sunwell fell.

There had been no right or easy choice, in the end—and looking at the cost of the path he had chosen to walk, Lor’themar was no longer certain that he had made the best decision. He had sacrificed lives for pride. It no longer seemed to him to be an even trade.

He began to drift in and out of consciousness after a while; whatever had happened after he had flown into his rage, he had taken a severe beating for it, and whatever healing had been done to him after the fact had either been insufficient or had reversed too much damage to be spent easing the aches and pains that sent him spiraling quickly into delirium.

He didn’t know how long he had been… unaware of his surroundings; his memories and the present blurred into one for what seemed a very long time before he finally returned to his senses, only to find that a new death knight had taken the place of the human who had been standing guard before.

For a moment he could only stare at the oddly familiar newcomer, still too hazy to fully register that the man—the elf—was staring back, looking down at him as though he was waiting for Lor’themar to say something. After a few sluggish seconds, the death knight’s face finally sparked a sharper memory, untouched by the haze of his several days (or had it been weeks?)… as well as a sharp, sudden pang through his breast.

"Koltira?" he whispered hoarsely.

"Lor’themar." Koltira’s voice was cold and dry, and echoed as though he spoke within an empty cavern. His face was totally expressionless—at least, it was until Lor’themar’s head began to spin and his vision blurred once more.

Lor’themar shook his head, trying to clear it, to fight off the delirium threatening to overtake him again. Some memory tugged at the back of his mind, vague and blurred with the others once again. Hadn’t someone mentioned there were other elves here as prisoners…?

_Oh._

"Were you the one who died?" Lor’themar asked, unaware that he was mumbling slightly. Light, his  _head_ …

"What one?" Koltira asked; he sounded… vaguely more interested.

"Prisoner." Lor’themar shook his head again, wishing his thoughts would clear themselves up again. "I was told one of the other prisoners died recently."

"There  _are_  no other prisoners,” Koltira told him. “Not as far as I know—you were the only one the Scourge took alive.”

"No other prisoners?" Lor’themar repeated. "That can’t be right—he said there were others—"

"Who on earth told you there were other prisoners?" Koltira demanded.

"Who else?" Lor’themar shot back, still unwilling to believe his old comrade. "Arthas."

Koltira threw his head back and laughed, and the sound reminded Lor’themar of dry bones shattering under a heavy weight.

"And you  _believed_  him?” the death knight finally demanded. “I thought you were smarter than that, Lor’themar. When in the hell is it  _ever_  wise to trust what your  _enemy_  tells you?”

Koltira’s words hit Lor’themar hard, and he jerked back as though the other elf had kicked him in the chest; if his head hadn’t been spinning before, it was now, and his ears rang almost painfully.

_No others_

Only now did Lor’themar realize just how much he had been relying on the possibility that he was not the only unwilling, living person here. That one thought had made bearing this nightmare a lighter burden—even more, the impossible goal of helping those others escape somehow had given him a purpose, something to fight for and plan out so that the clacking and groaning and squelching sounds and rotting meat stench of the Scourge did not drive him mad.

Now he did not even have that much. Now all that was left to him was his own captivity and the guard upon him that grew heavier with his every outburst. There was no one here to save. There was no one near to save  _him_.

He was alone.

~~~

The second village had been a more difficult nut to crack, and its villagers had been somewhat better prepared—most likely because this time the Scourge had had more open ground to cover before reaching the village, although it was equally plausible that these mortals had seen the pillar of smoke that still rose from the first village’s ruins.

Not that that preparedness had saved them, in the end; once more, Arthas’s wretched army had swelled in numbers and devoured those few unfortunate enough to bleed in front of the wrong zombies. Leaving the second village in ruins, Arthas lead his minions back to their camp in the woods, feeling a twisted sort of eagerness as he imagined the state he would find Lor’themar in on his return.

The death knight considered telling Lor’themar that another imaginary prisoner had died… but perhaps it was too soon for that. Better to let the idiot believe the ‘others’ were still alive for another day or two; then he could take some horror story to the elf about how one had been brutally eaten alive by a handful of the newer ghouls, and perhaps tease out another show of the elf’s temper in doing so. He certainly hadn’t been disappointed by today’s performance.

Still… perhaps he could torment the man a little more with a few gruesome details about tonight’s raid. Certainly he wouldn’t take well to hearing about the poor fools who had been mangled beyond recognition by his army, or the half-eaten carcasses they had left to burn and be picked at by whichever scavengers found them first.

Grinning, Arthas made his way through the camp to his prisoner, already envisioning the chaos Lor’themar might cause this time. Maybe he would kick twice as many skeletons to pieces this time—hell, he might even get a blow or two in on one of Arthas’s death knights. The image made Arthas’s grin grow feral with anticipation.

He found the elf still bound to the tree, his head lowered so that his chin rested against his chest. Judging by the lack of new damage in the area surrounding the prisoner and the calm demeanor of the cultist and the death knight who had been set to guard him, he hadn’t put up any struggle upon waking up… or else had yet to come to his senses. He _had_ taken several blows to the head in the last week, after all…

No, he _was_ awake; as Arthas drew near, he saw Lor’themar lift his head about an inch—likely just enough to see Arthas approaching. But instead of glaring sullenly at the human as usual, when the elf raised his head to meet Arthas’s gaze it was with a blank, almost deathly expression… or lack thereof.

"What’s the matter, elf?" Arthas asked, stopping just in front of the despondent man. "You can’t still be reeling from that little tap to the jaw."

Lor’themar didn’t respond—didn’t so much as twitch. What Arthas could see of his face remained blank, as though the elf was wholly unaware of what was going on around him… or perhaps as though he had simply stopped caring altogether.

Arthas’s lips twisted in the beginnings of a snarl. This was _not_ what he had expected to come back to, and was too far from how the elf had been before being knocked into unconsciousness to be natural. Something had happened while he had been away—something or some _one_ had said or done something to his prisoner that had reduced the elf to this unresponsive heap.

Some of the ghouls and skeletons were beginning to draw near, made curious by their master’s odd behavior. Arthas stood back, watching Lor’themar intently as the undead withdrew a pace and then advanced again, watching the human like a flock of rotted vultures plotting to steal some wolf’s meal. Not an unfair assessment, Arthas thought, though he had no plans of eating this pathetic creature before him.

As he watched, one of the bolder ghouls—or one of the stupider ones—half hopped, half crawled over to Lor’themar and stuck its rotted, shattered face so close to the elf’s hair that strands of it shifted weakly as the wretched thing sniffed at the elf’s face and neck.

When Lor’themar still did not respond, the zombie gave him an ungentle nudge in the ribs; when even _that_ did little more than startle a slight flinch from the elf, the zombie lurched for his shoulder, its mouth open unnaturally wide (mostly due to the few ragged tendons holding its jaw in place) and its loose eyeball swinging about on its ocular nerve.

If Arthas hadn’t been convinced before that there was something wrong with his elf, watching the man do little more than wince as the zombie pushed his head out of the way and bit down on the side of his neck certainly did the trick. Enraged, Arthas reached forward, grabbed the ghoul by its throat, and threw it into the rest of the gathered scavengers with a roar.

Lor’themar flinched at the sound, and vaguely he registered a slight stinging in the side of his neck was he raised his head to watch Arthas tear into his own soldiers, dismantling them with his bare hands or using one’s limbs to beat the others to pieces, all the while shouting and ostensibly cursing them in the crude, gutteral language of the Scourge. Turning his head, Lor’themar noted with the barest flicker of interest that even Koltira and Dana had taken a step back, their eyes locked on Arthas as the human continued to throw his tantrum.

If he could have mustered the energy to care, Lor’themar might have found some amusement in the situation… but as he was, even watching Arthas demolish a handful of his own minions was taxing, and after another moment the elf let his head drop to his chest again. His neck ached somewhat where the ghoul had bitten into it, but the wound felt shallow and Lor’themar was well beyond caring.

With a final, furious shout, Arthas threw the first zombie down and kicked the wretched thing so viciously that its newly reattached arm popped off again with a rip of the fetid twine stitchwork that had held it in place. The zombie groaned plaintively, then picked its arm up and dragged itself away with a last look over its shoulder at Lor’themar, its loose eye swinging so much Arthas was surprised the blasted thing didn’t go sailing off.

The human turned his back on the rest of the battered gathering as they, too, picked up their missing limbs and hastily evacuated the area. Turning a deathly glare on the cultist he had left to guard Lor’themar, Arthas jerked his chin at the elf—who once again appeared to be unconscious—and then turned his attention to the elven death knight.

"What happened?" Arthas demanded, closing the distance between himself and the undead elf until he was nose to nose with the other man. The human's rage was palpable, so much so that for a moment even Lor'themar flinched away despite his current crushing apathy.

To his credit, Koltira did little more than blink and lean back just a fraction of an inch as he answered, "He has been in and out of consciousness since you left, My Lord. He seems alternately delirious or depressed--it is highly possible he suffered a hallucination and as a result believes he heard or saw something that was enough to break his spirit for a time."

From where she knelt on Lor'themar's other side, Dana let out a quiet snort and only just managed not to roll her eyes at the lie. At least the elf had come up with something halfway believable... although from the look on Arthas's face, halfway wasn't going to be good enough.

"When did this happen?" the human snarled. His tone promised a second death to whomever he decided to deem responsible for his prisoner's sudden apathy.

"He's been like this since before I traded shifts with Thassarian, sir," Koltira responded. "I believe he would have a better idea of what happened."

"Thassari--" Arthas broke off with a furious growl, then pointed at the still unresponsive Lor'themar and told Koltira, "Keep an eye on him. If his behavior changes in any way, I want to know about it immediately--and don't let anything near him that thinks he's food!"

"Yes, My Lord." Koltira saluted briskly, then watched as Arthas stalked away--ostensibly to find Thassarian and ask him why the hell Lor'themar had taken on the personality of a newly-reanimated skeleton.

"You're stirrin' up trouble as doesn't need to be stirred up," Dana warned, finally standing up and away from Lor'themar again once Arthas was well out of earshot. Unsurprisingly, the fair-haired elf gave no indication that he noticed the movement at all.

Koltira ignored the cultist, but glanced down at Lor'themar with just a trace of disapproval darkening his features. Truthfully he was disgusted by how easily the former Ranger General had been reduced to this useless lump of flesh, and yet there was some small part of the death knight--very, very small, and even weaker still--that figured it might be for the best. Koltira didn't know why Arthas wanted the man kept alive, or how long it would be until he was finally turned... but it would probably be kinder for Lor'themar if he eventually became boring enough to be fed to some of the ghouls.

Edgar certainly seemed fond of him, though. The apparently highly unintelligent zombie had come hobbling back again, and although he stayed well away from Lor'themar and occasionally watched Koltira with the eye that wasn't hanging out of his skull, most of his easily-scattered attention was on the unmoving form slumped on the ground. As Koltira watched, the thing stretched forward as far as he could without actually moving closer and sniffed at the prisoner, then jerked back again and stared dumbly at Koltira, as if waiting for the death knight to chase him away.

"Aw, ain't that a heart-warmer," Dana crooned. "Lookie there, elf, ye've made a little friend."

The tone of her voice was a rather disturbing combination of fondness and mockery--and Koltira felt quite certain the fondness wasn't for Lor'themar. The undead elf sneered and shook his head in disgust.

Lor'themar raised his head long enough to glance at Edgar with eyes as dead as the zombie looked, then dropped his head again without so much as a sound.

Koltira snorted derisively; surely, this wasn't the same man he had looked up to as a ranger? It was hard to reconcile his memories with the easily-broken wretch in front of him; he had never known Lor'themar to be one to lie down and wait to die, as he did now. Even despite believing he had done the older man a favor, Koltira couldn't help but feel utterly revolted by the results.

Shaking his head again, Koltira turned his attention back to the zombie--and growled low in his throat as he caught the wretch trying to inch closer. It was enough; the zombie glanced at Koltira and fled, croaking miserably as it hopped along on all fours. Even still, Lor'themar showed no sign that he was even still awake, let alone aware of Edgar's departure.

It was a convincing ploy, made even more believable by the blond man's total emotional exhaustion--but it was very far from the truth.

Though his mind was still trapped in the stupor Koltira's earlier revelation had brought on, Lor'themar was nevertheless far from ignorant of his surroundings. While at the moment he was in no condition to take anything apart and try to find weaknesses or animosities among his captors, the former ranger still stored in his memory everything that he heard, acting so purely on hard-learned instinct that it was little more than a reaction nearly as automatic as breathing or blinking.

Lor'themar understood what Dana told Koltira, knew in some corner of his mind that the undead elf had purposely lied to Arthas and that Dana suspected it was only to cause trouble with the other death knight... and he would remember it, even as he reeled from the knowledge that he was alone.

He would remember what information he could glean from conversations held when no one thought he was listening--and when he recovered from this momentary despair, he would use it to try to escape once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a harder chapter to write--it's poor Lor'themar's first breakdown, and my first reminder that this isn't going to be a happy crack!fic. It's tough to remember that while I'm writing Arthas throwing an epic temper tantrum.


	5. Rage and Ruin

The once-beautiful lands of Quel'thalas lay in smoldering, blackened ruin; the forests had been burned to cinders, the mighty, golden-leafed trees now charred skeletons whose withered arms rise to the sky as if in an endless wail of pain. The soil was churned and foamy where it had once been rich and fertile, and many of the rolling hills and rises had been broken, shattered by force and by magic bolts that had gone wildly astray in the heat of battle.

Few creatures remained in the wake of the Scourge invasion; many of the birds and beasts native to Quel'thalas had fled when the first battles had begun, and those very few that had not had been slaughtered, either brought down by stray shots from both sides or slain again when the Scourge had attempted to use the fauna against the elves as well.

What creatures remained now were skittish, quiet, and held deathly still if they sensed they had been caught out in the open — or fled as silently as they could manage if that seemed the better option. Even these seemed victims of the fires that had ravaged their home; only small, dark-feathered birds and skinny-seeming lizards remained, and they were all soot-stained — the lone handful who had remained and survived.

A single fox — skinny, starved, and covered in so much ash and soot that its scarlet-hued fur looked pepper-colored — ran across the road once, cutting just ahead of the elves Kael'thas led in a hopeless race to the capital. Its wild yipping was garbled and mad, and though none stopped to look after it, it collapsed to the ground moments later, bleeding from a long gash in its side. It did not rise again, and soon the yipping gave way to the eerie silence once more.

As the reinforcements drew ever closer to the capital city, they began to encounter more and more undead horrors — wandering skeletons and ghouls at first, mindless creatures that attacked more because they smelled meat than because they saw the elves as enemies, but more and more Kael'thas's band began to encounter patchwork abominations, half-rotted zombies, banshees... Many of the reinforcements fell before they ever reached the ruined capital.

Looking now upon the smoldering half-ruins of Silvermoon City, Kael'thas wasn't at all certain those who had fallen weren't the fortunate ones. It had been one thing to see the forests charred and the waters befouled and the creatures reduced to rotted carcasses and skittish shadows; it had been painful enough to see so many of his people reduced to mindless, ghoulish caricatures of themselves, so grotesque in appearance that the living high elves seemed to grow foul in form for what resemblances they bore to the unliving. Seeing now the shattered gates, the once proud spires reduced to rubble, the battle-weary few who eyed the newcomers nearly as though they expected from them some horrendous act of treachery... it was almost too much to bear on top of everything else.

Yet even despite all of this, there remained some small, desperate hope in what sanctuary the broken capital was able to offer his people. It may simply have been that the hollowed half-ruins of what buildings still stood encouraged a feeling of security that his beleaguered people desperately needed as they began to pick themselves up and work to rebound from the terrible blow dealt to them; it may even have been what hope remained had in truth been rekindled by the sheer stubbornness of the priests and priestesses who walked still among their brethren, offering words of faith and comfort despite having all of them been abandoned by the Light. Whatever the cause, that ragged, stubborn hope had kept his people struggling even now, after their Sunwell was already destroyed, and for that Kael'thas was glad. The elves would need every ounce of strength and courage they could muster now, whatever the source may be.

He knew from the last piece of correspondence the defenders had been able to send that those who had rallied the remaining elves under their temporary leadership were stationed within the ruins of the Sunstrider Spire, where too were kept the most severely wounded. Thus after ordering the majority of his people off to help where they could — keeping only a handful of his closest companions with him — the quel'dorei prince set off towards the ruined palace, steeling himself against the destruction that seemed to have crippled the entire city.

The palace had been one of the best-fortified structures in the city prior to the invasion, and though the undead assault had destroyed the majority of the Spire, enough of it still stood to offer shelter to those in most need of it. The lower floors had been repurposed to house the infirm, while the uppermost floor — what was left of it — had been set up as a temporary headquarters. Initially Kael'thas had wondered at this; several of the infirm here were reported to be ill on top of their injuries, and while these were quarantined within the Spire's remains there was still the chance they could infect others — even the leaders above them, who no longer had solid walls on every side to keep the contamination at bay. Though the city had been rather roughly impacted, Kael'thas knew the Spire's main building had been massive, and there had been several smaller buildings on the palace grounds, as well. Surely it would be better to keep the ill in another building?

It wasn't until his party reached what remained of the Sunstrider Spire that the quel'dorei prince realized there _were_ no other areas to keep those who suffered disease away from the rest. Where the Spire had once sprawled across the space of several city blocks, now only rubble stood, broken walls and shattered ceilings collapsed to the dead, dry grounds and covered with a layer of dull gray ash and dust. A road had been cleared through the destruction, barely wide enough for two to walk abreast, and it lead straight to the only area of the palace that still stood in any shape to be occupied.

It was perhaps the longest trek he had ever made through the Spire grounds, and Kael'thas was relieved when they finally came to the front of the building. He could see inside, and while things were still not as he remembered, the lower floor had been cleared of whatever debris had cluttered the area and the cots and bed rolls set up for the infirm lent the room a morbid sort of orderliness, such as could be expected from rows of bleeding, half-dead elves and the constant scuffing of feet as their caretakers moved from patient to patient in endless rings around the floor.

Those who had rallied the survivors met Kael'thas's party outside; a handful of grim-faced warriors and magi, gathered behind a blond ranger bearing nearly as many bandages as those on the cots, these six who stood before him seemed as dire as the remains of the Spire — they stood because they must. They remained as the only protection their people had from utter panic and annihilation.

Kael'thas empathized with the hollow determination in their eyes. Were he alone, the realization that such battered, weary individuals had acted as his people's shepherds until now would have seen the prince on his knees in horror.

The ranger bowed stiffly; his gaunt face tightened for a moment in pain as he straightened and intoned, "Halduron Brightwing, acting Ranger General, sire. I have led our forces since the loss of the Sunwell."

"Lost?" The word fell like a stone from Kael'thas lips. Their Sunwell, the font of all their glory, the foundation of their very kingdom... had been taken?

"We led one final defense against the Scourge not two weeks ago," Halduron answered. His tone wavered for a moment as he added, "Our losses were too great. We were forced to retreat or lose what defenders remained who could still fight."

His voice was rough, as though he had only newly recovered from a severe cough, and beneath the soot and grime that smudged his face and arms his skin was unheathily pale — yet he stood proudly, and his eyes burned with something Kael'thas could not decipher. This was no weakling, seeking to claim glory for himself while others licked their wounds... but neither was he the seasoned ranger lord Kael'thas had expected to find. This man before him could not possibly have been the author of that last grim missive Kael'thas had received weeks before.

"Where is Lor'themar?" Kael'thas asked.

For the first time, Halduron finally showed some flicker of emotion. It was brief — barely a twitch at the corners of his eyes and mouth — but it showed enough that Kael'thas could have guessed his answer all the same.

~~~

"He fell."

Lor'themar felt two sets of bony hands grasp his arms; in the next moment he was hauled unceremoniously from where he had fallen and lain face-down in the dead leaves and foamy dirt beneath his feet. His head hung limply, tossed around by the ungentle handling he endured, and he was relatively certain his neck was now tweaked if not sprained outright.

"I can see he fell!" Dana snapped. A peek through strands of his lanky, grime-stained hair showed Lor'themar the cultist stood almost nose-to-nose with Koltira, who had once again been set to guard the pale elf while Arthas's attention was elsewhere. Dana stood with her hands planted on her hips and glared at the death knight, who stood with his arms crossed and returned her look coolly.

"I told you he would," Koltira commented mildly. "There's a reason Arthas has been transporting him in a wagon. If he shouldn't have walked before, he shouldn't have walked now."

"An' what makes _you_ the resident expert?" Dana snapped. "Elf or not, you're dead! What do _you_ know o' livin' folk?"

"Evidently more than you do," Koltira answered smoothly. He glanced over at the two skeletons holding Lor'themar in place and jerked his head towards the wagon. "Get him in before _he_ comes and has all our heads."

Lor'themar dragged his feet and repeatedly sagged against the double grips on his arms, only cooperating enough to keep from getting thrown on his face a second time. He would have preferred to walk — there was more opportunity to bolt without a cart to crawl out of first — but he also had the sense to accept that a ride in the wagon would afford him more time to rest and recover just enough strength to perhaps stand a chance of escaping.

The Scourge weren't on the move anymore; only a handful of skeletons had been left to guard Lor'themar, overseen by Koltira and Dana and accompanied by the badly decomposed ox-thing that pulled Lor'themar's wagon. Arthas had taken all the rest of his forces off beyond the forest's edge, ostensibly to attack a much larger settlement than the unfortunate peasant villages they had passed along the way.

From what Arthas had said before his departure and the sheer number of forces he had taken with him, Lor'themar gathered this was a rather important strike, though why he couldn't be sure. It didn't much matter either way, beyond that if and when he did escape, it could prove a valuable bit of information to return home with.

The ranger was thrown unceremoniously into the wagon; the bone-jarring impact shook Lor'themar violently from his thoughts, and he only just bit back a growl as his head collided with the rotting, gore-stained wooden floor. This roughness — as well as making Lor'themar get out and 'stretch his legs' about twice a day — was Dana's attempt to shake the man out of his continuing depression. Evidently Arthas's tantrum nearly a week ago (or had it been longer?) had convinced the cultist that it would be wise to bring Lor'themar back around as soon as she could manage.

Lor'themar was finding it harder to pretend apathy as the days passed and he began to reconcile with himself the reality that he was on his own for the moment. He had been in situations more dire than this, and his experience and instincts were beginning to steel him again. If he wasn't careful, Arthas would eventually realize his prisoner was returning to normal — and then Lor'themar would once again lose this lightened guard in favor of the handful of death knights who had been standing watch over him before. If he was to have any chance of escape, Lor'themar _had_ to convince Arthas to slack just a bit more in his vigilance.

The day passed quietly — so much so that Lor'themar could almost have said he grew _bored_. The ranger was left alone save for a visit from Dana, who bore a larger portion of meat than usual for Lor'themar to choke down, and when sunset came and no further incident than his earlier stumble came to break the monotony, Lor'themar became convinced that perhaps his chance was closer at hand than he'd initially suspected.

The sound of many bone-fashioned horns shattered the stillness as twilight fell, startling every creature left behind — even the bone guards, who shouldn't have been able to hear it considering they probably didn't have functioning eardrums anymore.

Lor'themar resisted the urge to look over the edge of the wagon, instead relying on his ears to tell him where everyone was and how they were moving. From what he could hear, nothing was close to the wagon — and there was the sound of Koltira's plate armor shifting against itself, of the undead elf's death charger snorting as its rider mounted... and then of hoof beats racing _away_ from the wagon, towards the source of the horn blasts.

_Now._

Lor'themar ripped his arms free of their restraints, having idly worked them lose throughout the course of the day; the leather straps snapped under the burst of strength and fell to the floor of the wagon with a noisy series of flops. In the next moment he was out of the wagon and facing one of his three bone guards.

The skeleton drew a long knife and swiped at Lor'themar, aiming for a tendon in his shoulder. The elf dodged, grabbed that wrist in one hand, and used his other hand for leverage as he tore the thing's arm free and sent it stumbling back. A hard kick to the ribcage saw the skeleton fly back into its two companions, who had by now come to help subdue their prisoner — and then Lor'themar was off, racing away from the wagon on legs that threatened to buckle with every step. He didn't have the time or energy to waste tangling with Dana, too, and in any event taking her out would require him to face her with three skeletons behind him. It was better to run, and hopefully put enough distance between himself and the Scourge that Arthas would decide chasing him down wasn't worth the time or the aggravation.

A bolt of icy-blue magic sang past Lor'themar's head and exploded on the ground in front of him, far enough ahead that he was just able to serve around it in time. Clearly Dana wasn't content to stand around and do nothing — but she would be easy to elude. Lor'themar just had to get out of range; even in his current state, he was certain he was the faster runner, and Dana had no mount.

The forest was dense, and though the plant life was already beginning to sicken with the prolonged presence of the undead, the trees seemed to recognize Lor'themar as one who could at least sympathize with their suffering. As he ran Lor'themar could swear several roots that looked to jut up in his path lowered themselves into the ground as he passed — and judging by the curses behind him, they raised up again in time to trip up Dana.

Another blast hit the ground just at his heel; the sole of that boot crumbled away, leaving only his sock between the skin of his foot and the sharp leaf litter below. Lor'themar stumbled, nearly dropping his stolen knife as he bounced off a younger tree, but managed to keep his feet for a few more strides — 

A third blast hit him across the backs of his ankles; this one was a matte black in color, and the magic wrapped around his legs like a snake, snapping them together and sending him skidding across the ground on his stomach.

Lor'themar could hear larger hooves than those of Koltira's death charger galloping towards him by the time Dana reached him, half out of breath and cursing him between gasps for air.

"Damn y'for a bloody fool!" Dana shouted, stumbling over another root before kicking the knife from Lor'themar's hand. "D'ye 'ave any idea what he'll do when he finds out about this, y'damned long-eared pain in my — "

She stopped abruptly, straightening and stepping away as the hoof beats came to a stop close by; dead leaves, dirt, and pebbles showered Lor'themar as the beast skidded to a halt on its hind legs, snorting and shaking itself (judging by the sound of tack rustling about a body held together only by a few rotted strips of flesh). There was a growl as its rider dismounted with a heavy _thump_.

A gloved hand grabbed Lor'themar by the hair and dragged him to his feet, its owner seemingly unconcerned by the fact that Lor'themar couldn't very easily get his feet under him when they were still bound tightly together by a magic that seemed to gnaw at his skin when he struggled against it. Instinctively, the elf raised his hands to try to pry the hand loose, or to at the very least pull himself towards his assailant and so put more of his weight on his arms.

His hands closed around a cold, spiked gauntlet — and in fact his left hand scraped painfully across the tip of one spike just as Arthas growled, "Can't you sit still and _behave yourself_ for more than a week, elf?"

Without waiting for an answer — or letting go of Lor'themar, who by now was beginning to squirm in his grasp — Arthas turned on Dana and snapped, "And _you_. I give you one job and return to find you've failed about as thoroughly as anyone could manage without actually losing the elf!"

He threw Lor'themar to the ground again, ignoring the other man's grunt as he continued, "How did one half-starved elf manage to get away from _three_ skeletons _and_ one of Kel'Thuzad's cultists? What, did you decide to unbind his arms for a few minutes since he's been so _well-behaved?_ "

"His bindin's was snapped, Lord," Dana explained, for once sounding a bit afraid for her life... or perhaps only for her chances of being resurrected as something more powerful than one of the tattered ghouls that seemed to follow her about like rotted pets. "Thickest leather straps as we could find, broke up into pieces. He was already loose an' runnin' when the skeletons came 'round to grab 'im."

"He _snapped_ his restraints?" Arthas sounded as though this wasn't quite the excuse he was expecting Dana to give him. At his feet, Lor'themar ground his teeth and silently cursed the woman to every horrid fate he could imagine.

"Easy as if they was paper," Dana answered. "The pieces of 'em's still in the wagon."

Arthas was quiet for a long time; Lor'themar could feel the human's eyes on his back, and tried not to squirm under the gaze. His best chance of escaping had just vanished before his very eyes...

Arthas dragged him to his feet again, this time grabbing the elf by the back of his shirt. Lor'themar was left scrambling for what footing he could manage as the collar of his borrowed tunic dug into his neck, and what was worse, Arthas watched the display with a wicked smirk that made the elf's skin crawl.

At the very least, Arthas didn't keep him dangling for long. After another moment he turned and walked back to his horse, dragging Lor'themar along like a cat held by its scruff and tossing him onto the saddle stomach-first. Lor'themar gasped as the air was knocked from him, but was again ignored as Dana cast another spell that bound his arms firmly behind his back.

"Try not to roll off the back," Arthas sneered. "Invincible has a tendency to kick when he's startled."

Arthas made no small matter of bringing Lor'themar back to his wagon, instead leading Invincible through the largest gatherings of his own forces that he could find and as a result taking a much longer time to get his elf back where he belonged.

Stomach-down across the saddle, his hands and feet still magically bound by Dana as she followed close behind them, Lor'themar could do nothing but grit his teeth and try to ignore the taunts and jeers that went up around him — especially from those among Arthas's army who had once been elves, their rotting faces painfully familiar as they looked up with scorn at the fallen Ranger General. Compared to that, the sullen, mindlessly hungry stares he received from the less intelligent undead were very nearly a relief; at least _these_ were looks sent his way by creatures too stupid to understand that what they saw was something more than Arthas parading a warm bit of meat around in front of them.

It felt to Lor'themar as though an hour passed before the wagon finally came into view... as did Koltira, and the human death knight Lor'themar now knew was called Thassarian. Neither looked terribly sympathetic; Koltira appeared to be fighting back a sneer, and Thassarian wasn't even doing that much. The human was outright smirking at Lor'themar, and leaned over to mutter something to Koltira that made the elf's upper lip twitch even more noticeably.

"Thassarian," Arthas said, bringing Invincible to a stop inches from the two death knights. The other man immediately straightened, all humor falling from his face — for the moment — as the bastard prince continued, "Keep an eye on this pest. Chasing him down won't be as much fun the second time around — and I'd prefer to keep him in one piece."

"He won't get away from me, sir," Thassarian assured him. Lor'themar wasn't sure — being slung over a skeletal horse's back on his stomach had begun to make his vision grow somewhat hazy, and the blood was now pounding in his ears — but he thought the death knight had placed just the slightest emphasis on _me_. Evidently Koltira agreed, because the elf stiffened just enough for Lor'themar to notice and sent Thassarian a murderous look the second Arthas turned his back to the pair.

One gauntleted hand closed around the back of Lor'themar's tunic; in the next instant he was hauled unceremoniously off the back of Invincible (who did indeed take displeasure in the movement and kicked back with one hoof, grazing Lor'themar's shin before Arthas pulled him clear with an amused snort) and passed off to Thassarian with a careless shove.

"Make sure that he doesn't," Arthas said.

Thassarian only just decided to grab Lor'themar in time to keep the still-bound prisoner from falling on his face. Nobody seemed to hear Lor'themar's grunt as his weight jerked painfully against the arm Thassarian caught; Thassarian himself hardly seemed to notice that he was holding anything at all, for despite the iron-strong grip he maintained on the elf's arm, Thassarian's attention was entirely on Arthas as the prince turned to glare at Koltira.

Whatever Arthas snapped at Koltira was in that same strange, unnerving language unique to the Scourge, so of course Lor'themar understood not a word that was spoken. He did, however, understand the loud smack that suddenly cut the relative quiet near the wagon — it was a sharp, slicing noise, overlapped by the sound of someone wearing plate armor staggering under the force of a powerful blow. Though his arm was wrenched sharply when he tried to turn and look, Lor'themar imagined Arthas had hit Koltira — and it seemed most likely that he had backhanded the elf. Lor'themar couldn't imagine Koltira (or indeed many others his size) could have kept his feet under an outright punch from the fallen prince.

Arthas was still snarling at Koltira, the sharpest bits of his tirade accentuated with more blows — one of which apparently _was_ with his fist rather than the back of his hand, because Koltira grunted and sounded as though he went sprawling — but Thassarian had already started dragging Lor'themar back into the wagon, apparently no longer interested in watching whatever else Arthas decided to do to Koltira.

With his hands and feet still loosely bound by Dana, who again followed the pair closely, Lor'themar found it difficult not to stumble. Thassarian didn't seem to care that the elf wasn't doing this to be troublesome; both times his prisoner lost his footing, the human jerked him up again so roughly that Lor'themar was shocked his arm hadn't been dislocated by the time he was finally shoved into the wagon. Skeletons quickly moved to bind Lor'themar's arms and legs together, using wide leather straps to start and going back over these with the same wicked, spiked chains he had last been bound with nearly a week ago.

Lor'themar bit back a low growl as the chains were tightened around him, pulled close enough that the spikes still dug into his skin through the leather. One strap wound across the spot on his arm Thassarian had gripped; if the skin hadn't been bruised before, Lor'themar had no doubt it would be within the hour, along with everywhere else the bindings bit into. He had no leverage, no slack to work free or break lose again... to say nothing of his lack of energy to do so anyway.

"I'd like t'see 'im try and get free of that," Dana sneered, finally dispelling the magic around Lor'themar's wrists and ankles as the last of the chains were secured. "An' I'd like to bet he gets his rations cut again for this li'l stunt. He'll not be able to get loose this time." She chuckled and kicked the chains around his ankles, digging the spikes deeper onto his skin and grinning at the growl this elicited from the elf.

Thassarian didn't comment, but by the way his lip curled as he looked down at Lor'themar it was obvious he wasn't about to write the ranger off as being unable to cause any more trouble, not now that Lor'themar had managed to break free of his bonds for the third or fourth time since his capture.

Lor'themar was not left alone with the skeletons this time: both Thassarian and Dana stayed at the rear of the wagon, where they could see their prisoner's every movement and easily intercept him before he even touched the ground if he _did_ try to bolt again. Thassarian sat on the edge of the wagon itself, and Dana and her pet ghoul kept close by, milling about but never straying out of sight or beyond several yards of the wagon. Edgar in particular was chased _away_ from the wagon more than he was herded back — the wretched creature kept hobbling too close, his one good eye fixed on Lor'themar with a mix of curiosity and the same animal hunger that seemed to make up the majority of any ghoul's motivation for doing things. It took a combination of Dana calling Edgar back and Thassarian having to bodily toss him away from the wagon to finally get the thing to understand he wasn't allowed near the warm, living bit of elf-meat that kept glaring sullenly at him from where he sat all bound up in chains.

Eventually the sound of Arthas's ongoing tirade came to an end; Lor'themar heard a final hefty blow land, and the wagon jostled as Koltira staggered against the outside. There was a moment of relative quiet, broken only by the sound of Arthas mounting Invincible and riding back through his forces; the moment the hoofbeats had faded away, jeers rose up from the undead forces nearest the wagon.

"Bad luck, elf." One voice rose over the other four or five — the speaker must have been standing nearest to the wagon of all of them. Lor'themar tensed, but no new tormentors came into his line of sight as the unknown antagonist continued, "Perhaps Arthas made a mistake, allowing one of your kind into our ranks as a death knight. Clearly you have all the competence of a geist."

Lor'themar's ears twitched slightly as he heard Koltira reply, "Surely you have something better to do with your time than bait your comrades with playground taunts, Orbaz." The quel'dorei sounded as though his lip was beginning to swell, but there was no hint of pain or shame in his voice — only contempt.

The same speaker — Orbaz, apparently — let out a low, barking sort of chuckle and said, "Watch yourself, elf. Everyone saw you let that half-starved mongrel get loose — and I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one who's starting to wonder whether or not you helped him."

A swell of muttering greeted the accusation; the hair across the back of Lor'themar's neck stood on end, and suddenly the heavily-bound prisoner found himself wondering whether Thassarian would feel inclined to drag him out of harm's way should Koltira decide to physically retaliate against Orbaz or any of the others antagonizing him. Certainly any undead with the ability to speak so coherently likely also possessed enough power to demolish his half-rotted little wagon.

"Clearly Arthas doesn't share your concern," Koltira replied smoothly. "If he did, I would have died a second death just now."

"Perhaps he's waiting for one of us to do the job." Orbaz's voice rang with menace. There was another swell of muttering, louder this time, more anticipatory, and Lor'themar tensed, ready to throw himself out of the way as much as he could.

Thassarian jerked to his feet and stalked around the wagon, out of Lor'themar's sight – but Dana remained where she was, staring daggers at Lor'themar and keeping Edgar back with a firm hand around his rotted arm. Lor'themar would have scoffed if his attention wasn't on the growing discord beyond the wagon. Did the woman really think he was going to try anything now, surrounded as he was by Arthas's increasingly belligerent undead?

"Enough, Orbaz." That was Thassarian; from the sound of it, he was standing with Orbaz and Koltira. "If you start a fight here, the fresh meat will get caught in the melee." There was a knocking sound against the wall of the wagon, hard and loud enough to make Lor'themar's ears ring.

"That mongrel deserves a few extra bruises," Orbaz answered with a sneer. "Hell, even a broken bone or three might do him good. At the very least, it would make it harder for him to run again." That last was said pointedly; Lor'themar imagined it had come with a sidelong glance at Koltira.

"That isn't for you to decide." Not that Thassarian sounded as though he disagreed with Orbaz. Lor'themar gritted his teeth.

There was a snort, but from the sounds of it Thassarian had managed to calm the storm... for now. The muttering died down; heavy-booted feet trumped away in all directions. Moments later, Thassarian returned and sat down again at the back of the wagon, scowling murderously in Orbaz's direction and rolling one shoulder.

It would seem the danger of a brawl had passed, for the moment; Lor'themar let himself relax again – as much as he ever did. His chains scraped quietly against each other, but the sound was still enough to draw Thassarian's attention to him. The look the death knight leveled on him could have scorched stone.

"Sit. Still," Thassarian bit out. "Or I'll break your legs myself."

Lor'themar held his stare evenly; even if Thassarian carried through with his threat, Arthas would likely order Dana to fix the damage once he found out. And Lor'themar couldn't escape anyway, chained up as he was. What would he do? Roll into the forest? Bite a few knees on his way?

"He won't be goin' nowhere we don' want 'im to," Dana sneered. "He does an' I sick little Edgar on 'im. They can have a nice little romp until He comes 'round to stop it."

Edgar seemed pleased by the prospect, at least. The ghoul gave an... excited, flailing sort of hop, then slapped the ground a few times and scampered back towards Dana with a look at Thassarian that bordered on wary.

Lor'themar grimaced and sat back, turning his head away from his three guards. He might as well conserve his energy while he could; no doubt Arthas was plotting some horrible new punishment for his latest escape. Lor'themar would need his wits about him when it was finally put into motion – it would likely take a fair majority of his energy just to keep his mind from breaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took way too long to write and the ending is horrible. I promise the next chapter will be better!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Night Will Bring No Dawn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704759) by [Consort of the Moribund (Inksinger)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inksinger/pseuds/Consort%20of%20the%20Moribund)




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